Life is Heald: Upon further review, if you'll please rise, the sausage is fine and Buzz is not

Kevin Heald

9:43 AM, Jan 18, 2013

Anyone looking for proof of the impact this column has on the world need look no further than the piece I did on a decidedly large and unpleasant woman by the name of June Shannon, her cherubic toddler, beauty pageant contestant daughter "Honey Boo-Boo" and her pre-pageant-performance fluid of favor, a caffeine-laced concoction of Mountain Dew and Red Bull they call "Go-Go" juice.

In short, somewhere a carnival midway tent sits empty, June having slipped away in the middle of the night under cover of infield tarp, Honey Boo-Boo will undoubtedly one day be involved in a shotgun wedding, the twist being her future in-laws will use it on themselves, and local dentists will finance the reopening of the mine in a fruitless attempt to find enough metal to fill Honey Boo-Boo's cavities. I condemned these condemnable people from every and all perspectives and worried for the future of America if these people were found favorable fodder for the viewing public.

So what happened? They got their own show. That swirling sound you hear is the United States being flushed into the Pacific.

With August temperatures once again relegating global warming to cold front status for Southwest Florida, I cried tears of sweat bemoaning the race to triple digits between the humidity and the temperature, while pondering the possibility of reverse hibernation involving an extended stay at Golden Corral and a walk-in freezer.

The Olympics brought some relief from summer reruns, but I was left to question the validity of giving gold to a race-walker when any retirement home in America probably has 10 old guys with swollen prostates that could walk laps around the winner.

With my first-born leaving for college soon, I told of my own graduation with high honors, a degree in advertising from the University of Florida and my plan to come back home to set the advertising world ablaze. Small problem. Naples had just recently discovered fire and the only agency hiring was located on the corner of "Not Here Boulevard" and "Fat Chance Lane." As of this writing, my fireproof diploma looks down at me from my office wall. As well it should.

The tale of acquiring my first trophy by winning the local "Punt, Pass and Kick" competition ended sadly when a review indicated a friend by the name of, I kid you not, Kevin Hill, had actually won, not Kevin Heald. Through therapy and long talks, I can now stay in the room whenever they go to instant replay.

Guilty of profiling, I did my part to aid homeland security by classifying the people who don't stand still for our national anthem as terrorist interns. A reader took exception and called me a tea-bagger. Or was it carpet bagger? Bagger Vance, maybe? I told him it was all about respect and to demonstrate, when he dies, I'll fill his open coffin up with chips and dip, and make sure we all dance to the Star Spangled Banner.

A new respect for lawn maintenance folks was born from attempting to turn my lawn over to our two in-house honor students.Despite acing geometry, one somehow believed that if he took the right angle, he could squeeze a 48-inch mower deck through a 24-inch crevice. The other assumed his mission with the weedeater was to create a post-nuclear landscape and proceeded to level anything subject to property taxes. He was weedeating the actual mulch when he ran out of gas.

I fessed up to having a DVD collection whose size is a source of conflict with the wife. Let's put it this way. Ted Williams was the last player to hit over .400 when he hit .406 in 1941. My DVD collection hit 406 last week when I bought "Earnest Goes to Camp" for $3.99.I go back and forth between knowing I have a problem and worrying about the DVDs not being in the pre-nup. They always hit you where it hurts the most.

I recounted my youthful ignorance in the ways of the sun and a recent, unpleasant visit to the dermatologist to freeze some suspect spots on my skin. The whole experience led to me resetting my life goal as I now hope to win the next family game of "Hide and Seek" by going unnoticed in the vanilla ice cream.

I honestly believe the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights is the greatest result ever of intimate relations between pen and paper, but the white-wigged crowd may have put a few stipulations in there regarding freedom of speech if they'd known people like Buzz Bishop would one day blame Charlie Brown TV specials for the bullying problem in America. What a #$%*&^ blockhead. I got your back, Chuck.

I told of taking our very young boys to a trout farm to fish for the very first time. It wasn't so much shooting fish in a barrel as it was draining the barrel and reaching in and grabbing one.

I lamented the difficulties in buying Christmas gifts for teenagers, a wife I've been with forever come next Tuesday, and the most difficult of all, the American male, me. Upon further review, however, it does seem like a certain copy of "Earnest Goes to Camp" wrapped under the tree would have addressed a lot of issues. I'm just saying.

Update on Chowder, our slightly overweight family beagle that we appetizingly refer to as the four-legged sausage and who had surgery for kidney stones in November. She's either dead or perfectly fine, her daily regimen of 23 hours on the couch does not provide a lot of data to analyze.

After reading Laura Gilbert's "Six Things Women Love About Men," I asked the wife what she loved about me. She went silent, but not before reminding me about her sudden, spontaneous, crippling attacks of laryngitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. Poor girl, we should get that checked out.

My final column of 2012 spoke to the blah-ness of the white Christmas light, as if Thomas Edison had been working in the dark on Christmas decorations when he suddenly killed two birds with one stone.

That completes another "Year in Review." They are painful, but the therapist says I can learn by looking at things twice. So far, the only thing I've learned is when it comes to "Punt, Pass and Kick" first-place trophies, finders-keepers doesn't mean squat.

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Kevin is seeking a literary agent who thinks his stuff is really good or is at least willing to tell people it is. He can be reached at LIFEisHEALD@yahoo.com.